United Nations-led negotiations on climate change are making the same mistakes as global trade talks that ran aground at the World Trade Organisation last year, a senior adviser to India’s prime minister has warned.

Nitin Desai, a member of Manmohan Singh’s council on climate change and a former top UN official, said a hard-nosed concession-based negotiation to reach a global consensus on how to combat global warming would likely founder. He urged political leaders to focus on common ground in the run up to UN climate change talks in Copenhagen next month rather than haggle bitterly over reciprocal concessions.